Wednesday, March 13, 2013

As
Congress fails year after year to agree upon an annual budget, the
government is kept limping along through temporary Continuing
Resolutions (CRs). The budget is supposed to be adopted each year by
October 1st, the beginning of the fiscal year. Instead, Congress has
been passing multiple stopgap funding measures each year. Under
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrats have not passed an
annual budget since April 29, 2009. The CR was approved by
a vote of 267 to 151, with most Republicans voting in favor and most
Democrats opposed. Democrats voted against it because it included
deep spending cuts and freezes.

On
March 6th, 2012, only sixteen Republicans voted against the latest
CR. Erick Erickson of Red State refers to the bulk
of them as the “Conservative Fight Club.” Most of them come from
the libertarian or Tea Party wings of the Republican Party.

Yet,
are they any more principled than the conservatives in the party who
voted for the latest CR? Conservative stalwarts like Rep. David
Schweikert (R-Ariz.), Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Steve King
(R-Iowa) all voted for it.